Beautifully Dissonant

later this day i wondered what is actually beautiful
hm, i'm not the first person to guess what it is
but

the key is dissonance

the small breaks in the surface letting the brooding stream of beauty emanate. the too stern looks, the too lightswallowing blackness of hair, the crashing disturbance in a piece of music.


Once i had to play one fugue by Shostakovich

it was carefully avoiding any dissonant (non-third/forth/fifth, octave) sound
it was so consonant it becomes scary after a minute
you wait for the dissonances to tickle your nerves
but nothing ever happens
it's like
a person smiling at you
for more than three minutes
i think this was in eraserhead
this was a wonderous eraserheaded piece of scary scary harmony
you know all is wrong, but it's kept as a secret from you

careful -
everything might become a fad
fad is bad!
fad is the shallow!
fad is the idiots posing as something you might like
by repeating/echolaliating something you really love

you'll understand it if you'll stumble across
the bitterness in the serene
the icy wind in the idyllic
the throatclearing in silence
the flaw that contrasts with inherent beauty
the flaw that is not a flaw but the soul

and then it has to go away!

for instance, i captured two brazilian artists on that camera

elis regina & antonio carlos jobim
they have a major flaw, ok
they're both dead
and jobim wears an abysmally ugly sweater
and regina spoils her breath with a ciggy
now for the reward - can those people transfer into the most beautiful persons on earth..
oh yes, they can
the two most beautiful moments in their little song are

1) when they start laughing (and dont want to)
2) when they're whistling a solo, totally out of tune with the piano

see..look down!

anyway - my daughter is likely to become a cyclist. or a kickboxer. she could kick me before she knew my name...

Grant McLennan

Crying for the first time in my life because some pop star died.
Grant, thank you so very very much.